Once you have a site approved by Google News you will have the ability to rank for “in demand” key phrases within minutes. Good targeted news articles can send floods of visitors to your site. Many webmaster who have Google News approved sites do not give enough thought to the articles they produce. They are in effect generating content just for the sake of it so they end up only generating a small stream of traffic for their news articles.
Once your site is approved by Google News, any articles you post on your site in most cases are inserted on the first page of Google search results for the key phrase you use in your article title. Key phrases that appear within your article also can be place highly in Google search results, so you must give plenty of thought to the articles you produce.
For now I think I will let screenshots of Google News do the talking, although I will may cover this topic in much more detail in later articles.
Can you imagine just how much traffic the sites that are hitting Google News for the specified search phrases are generating?
In my last article I talked about the vast amount of traffic a single article from a Google News approved site can generate. You might be surprised to hear that I have had many articles that have received over 2000 unique views in a day. The downside is though that news traffic can be hard to convert so you have to really get to grips with targeting specific key phrases. There is though no doubt that a Google News site is a great tool to push targeted traffic to perhaps other sites in your network which are able to convert the traffic at a much better rate. For now though let’s concentrate on how to get a site approved by Google News.
Google has published guidelines in regards to what sites they will accept which are:
1. Have news content reporting on recent events – please note that we don’t include informational and how-to articles, classified ads, job postings, fictitious content, event announcements, advice columns or adult content;
2. Have content that is original to the site;
3. Have articles that are written and maintained by a clear organization, one that has multiple writers and editors with accessible contact information;
4. Don’t solely promote their own activities or products;
5. Don’t violate Google’s quality guidelines available at
So in regards to content you must make sure that you have at least 10 posts per week for I would suggest at least a month. To be on the safe site you could even backdate quality news article 2 months. You can simply use Google to find backdated news stories in your niche which of course you can rewrite. Ensure ALL your articles pass Copyscape or you will not be approved.
Make sure the news articles you post are newsworthy and written in a quality manner.
Your site must “appear” to have multiple writers with the key word being “appear”. Simply create an “about us” page with an editor and 4 writers. Write a small bio for each member of your team to give them credibility. Also on this page include a full postal address and phone number. This page should also include details of how others can submit press releases to you.
It is a good idea to include a paragraph as below although obviously, don’t copy it word for word.
All press releases must be sent to our editor using the contact details below. All press releases are subjected to a strict review before publication. Press releases may in some cases be changed prior to publications. You must include full contact details including a business phone number for any press release to be accepted by “your site name”.
If you are worried about putting your own address on the site then get a PO Box. Remember though you can remove these details once your site has been approved.
Don’t submit a site for Google News approval with affiliate banners and links all over the site. If you are trying to get an existing affiliate site approved by Google then create a news site in a sub directory on your site without any affiliate links or banners.
Google is also very specific on the url structure you should use. Initially Google stated:
Ensure the article urls are unique and contain 3 digits or more, the number location doesn’t make any difference in terms of successful crawl ability by our bot.
So if you are using WordPress you could use a permalink structure such as:
/%post_id%/%postname%/
If you are creating a site from scratch you could simply initially create some blank posts to get the post id up to three figures then start adding your articles.
Google now accepts Google News Sitemaps which means you no longer need to have the above url structure. If you want to play it safe then stick to a url structure that has the required unique three digits in every url until you are approved. Once approved you can then download the Google News Sitemap Plug-in and change your url structure.
Once you have done all the above and checked, and double check then you can submit your site to Google news using this url:
In the “other comments” box compose a few lines stating why your organisation would benefit Google News. Remember Google is seeking organisations not one man affiliate sites.
After you have submitted your application, a few minutes later you will get an email from Google News as below:
Thank you for your interest in Google News. Please read this message
thoroughly for important instructions on how to finalize your request to
be included in Google News. In order to help us deal with the large number
of requests for inclusion, we ask that you review our guidelines below and
reply to this email if your site meets our qualifications.
We typically include sites in Google News that:
- have news content reporting on recent events – please note that we don’t
include informational and how-to articles, classified ads, job postings,
fictitious content, event announcements, advice columns or adult content;
- have content that is original to the site;
- are written and maintained by a clear organization, one that has
multiple writers and editors with accessible contact information;
- don’t solely promote their own activities or products;
- don’t violate Google’s quality guidelines available at
hear from you, we’ll be happy to review your site for inclusion in Google
News.
While we strive to include as many sources as possible, please be aware
that we can’t guarantee the inclusion of your articles in Google News. We
appreciate your support as we work to improve Google News.
Regards,
The Google Team
Promptly reply to this email stating that you believe that you have met all the requirements plus also stating that you would like Google News to process your application. Again do this in a business manner.
After this you simply have to wait. I have had sites approved in hours although it is not uncommon to wait for up to two weeks. Remember to keep adding quality news articles to your site whilst your application is being processed. If you have to wait at least a few days then make sure that during this time you are adding quality news articles daily.
Once you are approved it can take up to 48 hours for your articles to be picked up by Google News. Again during this time keep adding quality news articles plus submit a Google News sitemap through Google Webmaster Tools.
Once your articles are appearing in Google News you are safe to add affiliate links and banners to your site.
This is an article that I promised to write over a month ago. Sorry for the delay but I have simply been up to my neck in work during the last six weeks. Anyway, let’s get on with this article. Firstly let me say I have many “sleeper” sites. These are sites with decent brandable domain names with perhaps a dozen articles and a few quality links. I’m happy to let my sleeper sites age till I decide what to do with them. I will add a link or two each month targeting one or two semi competitive key phrases, but in all honesty my sleeper sites receive little attention from me. We all know the value of aged domains plus perhaps more importantly aged back links, so in my opinion it is very worthwhile to have a few sleeper type sites in several different sub niches.
There has been a lot of debate about the old “content versus links” question on PAL which I think ties in nicely with this article. We all know that anybody can rank a page full of garbage if the page has enough quality links. How about ranking for decent key phrases without any links using short articles with call to actions pushing readers to other quality sites?
Let’s take a look at the visitor stats for the site I’m referring to. You can see it is just ticking along with just a little traffic.
Inspired by others I decided to “wake up” this site and try and get it approved by Google News. I simply started to compose sports and general gambling news articles, back dated to cover the previous six weeks. I made sure that all the site articles passed Copyscape plus of course I ensured I followed all the guidelines set by Google before submitting my site to Google News. Over the course of 6 days (well I did have other things to do) I painstakingly composed all the articles.
After submitting the site, just a few minutes later Google email me. I had to confirm that I had met all their requirements and confirm that I wanted Google to review my site in regards to being accepted by Google News. I did this, fired off the email then switched to tasks on my other sites. I was amazed that in less than five hours later my site was approved! I had to wait 48 hours for my articles to be picked up by Google News but as soon as they were booooooooom!
I soon found though that having an approved news site was draining all my time as I was spending far too much time on the site with little reward. You kind of get addicted to generating thousands of views for Google News articles which can be nightmare to convert. Over the next week I generated over 12,000 unique visitors, with I’m ashamed to say only 5 RMP’s. It was clear to me that I had a lot to learn.
Since getting my first site approved by Google News I have had another approved. I have also made great progress in converting the floods of news traffic into RMPs. In my next article I will discuss in detail exactly what you need to do to get your site approved by Google News then in further articles I will go into detail about how to convert news traffic.
I thought for today’s article I would take a different approach and detail reasons I have seen affiliate fail to make money from their sites. Affiliate forums are full of posts from affiliates struggling to generate revenue, although in most cases the reasons why they have not succeeded are obvious. Below are four quick tips to help push up your conversion rates.
Site Is of Poor Quality
I for one will never sign up through any site that either has spelling mistakes or sentences composed with poor grammar. I never cease to be amazed by webmaster who obviously spend a great deal of time with their link building, but have not even taken the time to run their text through a spell checker or spent the time to proof read their content.
Honest Reviews Sell
The internet is littered with sites that give every product they promote a top review. Don’t treat your readers as idiots! Be honest and include products that you don’t rate highly to give more credibility to the main products you are pushing.
Add Quality Content Daily
This is of course a no brainer as more quality content generates more key phrases in search engines which of course generate more readers for your site. Many though start of full of enthusiasm then move on to other projects, so they end up with many thin half finished affiliate sites. For your main site add at least one new article every day.
Fine Tune Call to Actions
Most affiliate sites simply are not optimised for conversions! Most days I see great gambling articles that don’t include any call to actions. Firstly make sure all articles contain at least three calls to actions. I like to at the very least have two calls to action above the fold and one below. You need to track the performance of every call of action on your site. Once you are doing exactly that then you can replace the call of actions that are not performing, with call to actions that are performing. Yes it is as simple as that!
Many new affiliates simply don’t have a clue which of their call to actions are generating clicks and which are not. They use the same tracker on all call to actions across multiple pages so they are in effect working in the dark.
Can you honestly answer the following questions?
Which pages on your site generate the most views?
For the above pages which call to actions generate the most clicks and sign ups?
Firstly let me apologise for the lack of activity on Gambling Cash Cow during the last few weeks. After one of my sites was hacked I decided the time had come to upgrade my servers. Upgrading my servers of course gives me faster page load time plus I have also updated the security of all sites. Add to this I have also taken the time to clean up my cpanel accounts which to be honest were in a mess. All these tasks of course take time, which has meant that many of my other day to day tasks, such as updating content on my sites have had to take a back seat.
I’m delighted to announce that the next Gambling Cash Cow affiliate interview will be with an affiliate account manager from one of the biggest UK online bingo sites. More news on this very soon! I will also be adding a new section to Gambling Cash Cow so let me tell you more.
I realise as an experienced affiliate that there are many basic tasks I carry out that I simply take for granted. I feel that it may be of great benefit to those new to the gambling affiliate industry, or perhaps to those who are struggling to generate revenue, that I add a new writer to this site. The new writer will of course be a novice gambling affiliate. I’m going to take him completely under my wing in return for him writing weekly posts about his progress. In time his posts should be a great resource for new affiliates as you will have a complete record of everything he has done plus of course the progress he has made.
The new section should be up and running by the very latest next week.
For me the 1st of September signals the start of a new gambling year although perhaps I should explain why. Here in the sunny UK (not), most gambling operators advertise heavily on prime time TV. During the summer months most pull the plug on TV advertising as of course it is the holiday season. In real terms there are less people watching the small screen, so any TV ad will have a reduced ROI. For any of you who are from the UK you will soon find that many new gambling TV ads will be appearing during the commercial breaks.
Party have already got their TV campaign up and running with a 6 figure, three week long campaign targeting their online bingo site. Betfair have also launched their campaign taking prime time slots during Euro football games. Most of the other UK gambling operators are set to launch their campaigns during September or at the very latest October.
The surge in TV ad campaigns are one of the main reasons why September and October are very profitable months for UK gambling affiliates. The summer months are always a slog, as many abandon their computers in favour of taking a holiday or just in general getting out and about. I lose many of my regular punters during the summer months as they are taking holidays, keeping the kids occupied during the school summer holidays or simply just enjoying the summer and the long hours of daylight. Roll on October when the clocks go back an hour making the nights begin at 4pm.
To cash in on the flood of new TV ad campaigns I have been contacting the main operators I promote to try and get a preview of the ads they intend to run. Doing this I’m able to get a head start over other affiliates as I can target, believe it or not, key phrases from the ads. Last year I had great success simply targeting a catchy phrase from a song in a bingo ad.
So I welcome the new gambling year with great anticipation, as I hope to see a flood of new sign ups from the heavy TV exposure, plus I’m looking forward to the return of many of my long term players who always go AWOL every summer.
Many have asked me if I could turn back time, what would I do differently. Would I build the same sort of sites? Would I be working in the same niches I’m working in now? I thought it may be of interest to many of you if I posted my actual thoughts.
The first thing I will say is that I wish I had entered the online casino niche years before I actually did. To be honest in regards to online casinos I admit I was very naive. You see I’m not a gambler, so simply did not realise how much money there was to be made. I have visited casinos all over the UK to play poker tournaments but never took any notice of the slots or casino games. I wrongly assumed for years that poker was the best gambling niche, although I realise now how wrong I was. Online casino players can lose thousands in a few hours whereas poker players would have to play for days at high stakes to generate the same sort of affiliate income. In my opinion the online casino niche is by far the most profitable of any gambling niche.
Many gambling affiliates sidestep online bingo because they believe they will not generate a good return. Let me say they are way of the mark! I could have jumped into online bingo right at the onset but I simply could not believe online bingo was going to become so popular or profitable. Luckily I had the sense to get in on the bingo niche in the UK before the market was saturated, but in reality I could have started at least 2 years earlier.
I have though learned from my mistakes and now will happily spend up to a week to build a test site targeting a new niche then drip back links to it over a few months. I have also learned that by the time something is a sure fire winner then in most cases it is saturated.
The poker niche is extremely saturated plus the rewards for affiliates are at an all time low. I’m not saying that new affiliates can’t make money from poker but what I am saying is that compared to just a couple of years ago the rewards are reduced whilst the risks have increased. Over the last year I have never seen so many reports of either affiliates being screwed or poker sites going under. I got my fingers severely burnt a few years ago by the Microgaming Tusk fiasco so from that day I only promoted quality UK sites. If I could really turn back time I would have kept well way from Microgaming and spent more time on the quality UK sites which is exactly what I’m doing now!
As affiliates we all know that at the end of the day we need links with the key phrases we want to rank in our anchor text. The more competitive the key phrase, then the more links we require. Yes it is as simple as that! Even a page with poor on-page seo can rank highly if the page has enough links.
Over the last few months though, I’m starting to see changes. Some sites are ranking highly with mainly internal links. There is no doubt that big portal brand type sites have more power than ever before. On the flip side I have also seen many exact match domains ranking far better than ever before plus I have also seen pages ranking well with mainly spam links.
It is clear to me that the Google Algorithm is going through major changes, perhaps since Caffeine was introduced. Many feel that some filters are not yet in place within Caffeine, hence pages with mainly spam links ranking highly. I agree with this theory as I have seen some of my test sites regain decent rankings since Caffeine was introduced. These sites were heavily penalised prior to Caffeine being rolled out.
Many have also noticed Google’s current weaknesses and are busy exploiting the spam links loophole. You can purchase a blog harvester script for under $50 which will harvest tens of thousands of blogs that allow comments to be posted in minutes. For the around the same price you can purchase a blog comments poster that will auto submit to your harvest list. In my opinion though building spam links to your site is a terrible idea. Yes in the short term you may well indeed gain rankings but in the long term you will kill your sites. Those who you take rankings from are not going to be happy, so you will stand a high chance of being reported to Google. Many affiliate programs state in their terms and conditions that they will not tolerant affiliates that resort to spamming, so you may even lose your affiliate accounts. Google is sure to resolve the spamming loophole so the chances of your sites receiving a long term penalty are extremely high in the long term.
If you intend to be a gambling affiliate for the long term then I strongly believe you need quality sites. I have said time and time again that affiliates should build big brand type sites. You need sites that are “sticky”, by which I mean sites that retain visitors for more than just a few seconds. I believe that “sticky” sites do indeed get a ranking boost from Google which would explain why a site I launched in May this year is doing far better than I expected.
Google may well be a little messed up at the present time but you can bet your last dollar that they will sort things out.
I have been saying for a good few months that I expect to see online gambling regulated and legalised in the US within the next year. With Barney Frank’s Bill passing its first hearing the process of the US returning to the online gambling world is at last underway. Those of you, especially those who promoted Euro sites will remember the good times prior to Euro sites closing their doors to US players. Perhaps you remember the likes of Paradise Poker who were one of the giants of the online poker world. Since losing their US players I’m sorry to say Paradise have shrivelled to just a small skin on the Boss network. Other sites have suffered the same fate and have either gone bust or merged with other Euro operators.
Sites such as Poker Stars and Full Tilt who have effectively been sticking two fingers up at the US government by allowing deposits from US players have seen tremendous growth. God knows how many millions or billions these sites have made since the SAFE Port Act was introduced. Euro sites have complied with US law with the likes of Party Gaming even paying the US government $105 million for the period they accepted US players.
I strongly believe that when online gambling is legalised in the US we are going to see great change in the industry. I’m sure the likes of Poker Stars and Full Tilt are going to be hit hard. There has already been an amendment added to Frank’s bill as below.
One of the hot topics raised in a hearing last week was what to do with online gaming sites such as Poker Stars and Full Tilt Poker that have been accepting US customers against the government’s wishes. Rep. Bacchus proposed an amendment that would block any sites that have been disregarding US laws regarding Internet gambling from obtaining a license. The prohibition for these sites was agreed upon in the Committee and the amendment was passed.
You don’t need a crystal ball to realise that when the US return to online gambling we are going to see major changes. Expect the Euro sites to prosper taking players from the likes of Stars and Full Tilt. Also I believe that the smaller networks that have failed to cash in, even though they have continued to accept US players are doomed. Can we really expect the likes of Merge to be granted a licence? Do you think Merge will be able to compete when all the Euro sites are once again accepting deposits from US players? I think not!
I also expect for the first time to see big brand US operators cash in on the online gambling boom with the likes of Harrah’s taking the lead. Looks like we have exiting times ahead of us!
Those who know me will know that I have a network now close to 100 sites. To be honest I’m not exactly sure how many sites I actually have. As you can imagine I’m a very busy man, perhaps too bloody busy.
I have great plans for Gambling Cash Cow but I have limited time in regards to what I can actually do. I also appreciate that as an experienced gambling affiliate I may miss out techniques that I simply take for granted. I want Gambling Cash Cow to be the number one resource for those either struggling to generate a decent monthly income or even those entering the gambling affiliate world as complete novices.
To enhance Gambling Cash Cow I’m willing to mentor either a new affiliate or perhaps a struggling affiliate completely free. I’m looking for someone from the UK ideally based in the North West. The person I pick will be expected to write at least 2 posts per week which will be posted in a new section on this site. In return I will offer the following:
Help With Site Creation & SEO
Creation Of A Detailed Daily Action Plan
Conversion Advice & Techniques
Weekly Review Of Progress
Monthly Face To Face Meeting To Discuss Progress & Strategy
Full Skype Messaging Support
I have no age restrictions but I am looking for someone who is highly motivated, dedicated plus of course who will act on the advice I give them. I’m looking for someone who is prepared to work at this for at least a year. I would prefer somebody with little or no experience as an affiliate.
If you think you this is for you, then simply email me at tony @ gamblingcashcow .com giving me full details of why you think you are the ideal candidate.
Well the last week has been a real eye opener for me. Having one of my main sites hacked has given me a lot to think about. I know now that I have to move away from WordPress which is going to cause a great deal of work. For now though, as I said in my previous post, I’m working flat out to make my WordPress sites far more secure.
I do though strongly believe that many affiliates are running hacked sites which will result in a penalty from Google as per the statement below
Hidden links whether put there by the website owner or by a hacker or a violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and can result in a site being penalized or even de-indexed. (Google’s process of indexing is automated and there is not really a way for them to determine if the hidden links were added by the website owner or a hacker.)
Remember my site was functioning normally with no visible sign of any problem until one day most of the key phrases from the site received a -450 penalty. I checked all the pages in multi browsers viewing the source code and could see nothing wrong. It was not until I use the Google Labs Tool, Fetch As Google Bot that I could see the source of the problem which was hundreds of inserted spam links.
For anybody who experiences a drop in rankings for a WordPress site I would advise that your first port of call should be to check your site’s pages with the Fetch As Google Bot tool. This is the only way you will see the spam links.
Next check all your site’s source code. Search for source code for something that starts like the example below.
Better still search for “eval(base64” in your files.
To convert the above string go to http://ostermiller.org/calc/encode.html and copy the string then select decode base 64. This will convert the string into readable code. If you are using a free theme then you will probably find the above sort of string in your themes footer and maybe even the function file. You can though of course check the contents of the string by decoding it.
Also remember that the injection hack that attacked my site was only present in a few files that I could have easily overlooked. Make sure you check EVERY file of your site!
If the hack goes unnoticed then you will receive a penalty from Google resulting in loss of possible all your rankings. The good news is that if you get the hack removed quickly, submit a fresh site map to Google then you can get back your rankings quickly. I know this for a fact as I’m delighted to say my rakings returned early this morning.
I do realise it is easy to take things for granted especially when things are going well but I suggest that you start taking the time to check your WordPress sites. Don’t let what happened to me happen to you!
After 3 frantic days without sleep my site is back online and hack free. On reflection I have made mistakes as my site was simply open to hacks. In this article I’m going to cover what steps you can take to make your site more secure so you don’t experience what I have been through.
Hide WordPress Version Details
Firstly make sure all of your WordPress sites are using the latest version of WordPress. I made a big mistake of not updating to the latest version as my custom theme was not compatible with version 3 of WordPress. To be honest this was a stupid mistake. WordPress frequently releases updates which fix security issues. There are many free online hacks that can be downloaded so you can start hacking old versions of WordPress within minutes. If any of your sites are using old version of WordPress then you have a higher risk of being hacked.
Related to the point don’t advertise what version of WordPress you are using. Every default version of WordPress by default shows the version used if you view the source as below.
Change the Meta name so it looks something like the example below.
Change WordPress SQL Table Prefix
I would say that perhaps 99.99% of WordPress installs use the wp_ sql table prefix. This again is a mistake. Simply changing this to something else will mean that many of the current hacks will not be able to attack your site.
Move The WP-Admin Folder
Again most WordPress installations have the admin folder in the standard position. Simply moving this folder to another location will make your site more secure.
File Permissions
Think about the file permissions of your site otherwise you are in effect giving the whole world access to hack your site. Use the settings as below.
Common WordPress Themes
Be very careful with common WordPress themes that are used on thousands of sites. For example it would be easy to release a free theme with a security hole then attack those who use the theme. If you are using a well known theme then at least rename the theme folder and change the theme meta name.
Common WordPress Plug-ins
Again popular plug-ins have been subjected to hacks. Use as few plug-ins as possible and try and install with a different folder name than the default plug-in folder. Also if possible remove meta names etc.
Administrator Login Details
Don’t have your main admin login as simply “admin”. Also use a secure password to stop brute force attacks. There are many apps available online to generate secure passwords.
Backups
Make sure you have at the very least a weekly backup of your sql database plus a full database export using the WordPress tools option. Also make sure you have a copy of all custom theme files.
At the end of the day no site is ever going to be 100% secure. There is though no doubt that if you break away from having a standard WordPress install then you are going to reduce the chances of being hacked.
I will say that having one of my best earning sites hacked has been a wakeup call. Perhaps now the time has come for me to develop my own CMS so I can vastly reduce worries of future hacks.
In the next post I will talk about how to spot WordPress hacks. Remember not all attacks wil take your site offline!
Site Loses All Google Rankings – Case Study Part 1
Last week one of my established sites lost all rankings. I actually witnessed 30+ high profile key phrases vanish from the Google index within minutes early one morning last week. I have of course lost rankings before as have most affiliates at some time. To see one of my major sites take such a hit though was simply sickening. Surely this must be a severe Google penalty?
First port of call was Google Webmaster Tools but to my dismay there were no errors or messages. Next I checked the site, checked the RSS feed, checked the source code of pages in the browser and even the Google cache but I could see nothing wrong at all. I even checked the back links and search queries in case the site had been subjected to some form of attack but I could not find anything wrong.
Next port of call was the main webmaster forums to see if others had experience any drastic changes in SERPS but again nothing. Even the other site on the same Cpanel account was ranking as normal so at this stage I simply thought that the only explanation could be that I had simply been penalised by Google. That was until I checked the main urls with the Fetch As Google Bot Tool! Using this tool to check the main urls I could see dozens of injected spam links on every page. It seems that the injected links could only be seen by Google Bot.
After a few hours searching the sites source files I found a couple of php files with the dreaded Eval string. I posted the string into a base 64 decoder just to clarify it was the source of my problems. Indeed it was! Next I pasted the string into Google but was unable to find an exact match. It looked like my site had been targeted to lose it rankings. The spam links did not even link to actual sites as the domains did not exist. Searching the internet I found others who had been subjected to this sort of attack but they could trace the links to pharma sites. Perhaps this was simply an attack to destroy my sites SERPS?
Today I did find something similar on the Webmaster World forum so perhaps for those interested in this episode the thread is well worth a read.
I’m going to go into this in far more detail once I have my site back up and running again. I’m wondering though how many others have had this sort of thing happen to them and simply put it down to a Google penalty rather than find the actual source of the problem?
Today Barney Frank’s bill is being voted on by a committee which if successful will lead to a full House vote, followed by the Senate and then finally with Obama’s signature . Are we going to witness the first steps of legalised gambling in the US today?
The Committee on Financial Services will meet in open session on Tuesday, July 27, 2010, (and subsequent days if necessary) at 10 a.m. in room 2128 Rayburn House Office Building to consider the following measures:
(1) H.R. 5814, Public Housing Reinvestment and Tenant Protection Act of 2010;
(2) H.R. 4868, Housing Preservation and Tenant Protection Act of 2010;
(3) H.R. 2267, Internet Gambling Regulation, Consumer Protection, and Enforcement Act;
(4) H.R. 3421, Medical Debt Relief Act of 2009;
(5) H.R. 4790, Shareholder Protection Act of 2010; and
(6) H.R. 5823, United States Covered Bond Act of 2010.
For all us gambling affiliate today could be a major turning point. Let’s hope it goes well!
Today someone asked me to take a look at their site as they could not understand how they could not convert over 150 daily visitors into even one sign up. I have to admit after inspecting their site it was far from the best affiliate site in the world. Saying that though the reviews were not bad plus they were using good call to actions. From what I could see I would expect daily traffic of 150+ to generate signups so I was intrigued to why healthy traffic was generating no sign ups.
The webmaster gave me access to his site so I logged on to take a look. Within a few seconds of logging into the webmaster’s WordPress admin it became clear to me the source of the problem. The site had over 12,000 comments waiting to be approved. In simple terms the site was being spammed to death. A quick glance at the site’s traffic stats showed only a small trickle of search engine traffic and no traffic from quality referrals. In infect most of the 150 daily visitors were simply spam bots. I advised the user to mark the comments as spam plus close comments on posts and pages that were being spam attacked.
This episode reminds me of a friend who purchased a site with reported traffic of over 500 uniques a day. On closer inspection the traffic was mainly either spam bots, hot links to images plus believe it or not to a hidden porn page on the site.
How much of your site’s traffic is real quality traffic?
This is a question that I get asked most weeks so I though perhaps I should cover it in an article. If you are starting with a new domain targeting even semi competitive key phrases you should expect to establish your site in around a year. New sites have to earn trust with search engines. You need to build links at a steady pace plus you need to build up your site’s content also at a steady pace. Back links have to age to gain power as do links on internal pages. Trying to speed up the process up by acquiring hundreds of links during a site’s early months will simply result in search engines holding your site back for an extended period. Those who build gambling affiliate sites expecting a good return in a short time end up leaving the industry in most cases earning very little. To become a successful gambling affiliate you need to accept that you will have to commit yourself to the long term.
For those who do stick it out I have some great news for you. As your site and of course your back link age then you will start to increase you traffic every month. As you are adding new content every week you will of course be generating more long tail search queries. As you are increasing the number of pages of your site your internal site wide links will also become more powerful. All you have to do is keep at it; it is as simple as that.
If affiliates simply stuck with a couple of sites, concentrating their efforts on these sites then they would have a great chance of success. The trouble is that many get distracted ending up with dozens of sites so dilute their content and link building efforts. A thousands back links and pages have far less ranking power when they are spread across a dozen sites rather than a couple. I strongly advise you to start with no more than two main sites, not even thinking about adding more sites until at least one is generating a healthy monthly revenue stream.
There are though always exceptions to the rule. In my next article I will tell you about how a site I had neglected went from zero traffic a day to over 2700 visitors a day in just 9 days.
No matter what the subject matter, nobody knows it all! One of the great aspects of working as an online affiliate is that the industry is so volatile. Google can change its algorithm overnight, operators can change their terms and condition plus of course new products in the form of gambling games and slots are launched all the time. I know many don’t like change but I love it. I love the challenges that change brings. As I have said before in regards to operators I play it safe and stick to the big UK brands so I’m I don’t have to worry about being screwed. I am though like all other affiliates at risk of losing ranking to Google algorithm changes, at risk to losing rankings from perhaps aggressive link building from other affiliates plus perhaps even changes in the UK gambling laws although that possibility is remote.
This year we have seen perhaps more major changes in the Google algorithm that ever before. I know of many affiliates who have lost rankings overnight. I know others that have seen a big drop in long tail traffic plus I have seen on many webmaster forums that new sites are simply not picking up the initial traffic they use to. I have been hit by these tweaks to the Google algorithm. Some of my sites have seen a decline in traffic although my main sites seem to have benefited from the updates. The updates though have spurred me into action so I now have a completely revamped strategy compared to just a year ago.
I strongly believe that for those affiliates who are willing to spend time with test sites that the rewards can be great. When Google does tweak its algorithm many webmaster simply wait for an answer to appear on webmaster forums. Those who are willing to test different techniques to find the solutions are the ones that will prosper.
We are delighted to announce that starting from this week we will be posting one hour audio interviews with the top UK gambling account managers. We feel that for some time there has been a gulf between affiliates and account managers. We believe in depth interviews with the leading account managers will help to bridge the gulf.
Later this week we will post a one hour interview with members of the Virgin Games affiliate team including Pierrick Leveque, Head of Acquisition, Ollie Wilson the Casino Account Manager and Craig Perrott, Virgin Games Bingo Account Manager. I’m currently editing the interview down to around 60 minutes but can tell you that the interview gives great insight in to the gambling affiliate industry.
Next month we will posting a full one hour audio interview with the Betfair team including Joe Legge who is perhaps one of the most experienced UK account managers as he has worked for Paradise, Virgin and currently Betfair.
At Gambling Cash Cow we believe we are breaking the mould in regards to gambling affiliate techniques and information plus we feel we have a lot more to offer our readers. We intend to make GCC a complete resource for those either entering the gambling affiliate world or even for those who are struggling to generate revenue from sites with potential.
We are committed at GCC to skip the bullshit to give you advice and techniques that really do generate income!
As you know I’m trying to make Gambling Cash Cow a complete resource for those entering the world of gambling affiliation. I feel there is a gulf between affiliates and account managers which sometimes can result in misinformation or even in some cases bad feelings. To perhaps bridge the gulf I intend to obtain interviews with all of the top UK account managers.
I’m delighted to announce that Andrew Hawes has joined Gambling Cash Cow. Andrew has a vast amount of broadcasting experience including working for the BBC as a football commentator. He also has experience of poker reporting, including working for Poker Tour Radio for which he was involved with most of the broadcasts from Dusk Till Dawn.
Our first interview is already in the can which features three of the team from Virgin Games. We hope to have this interview edited and online within the next few days.
We are also on the lookout for established UK affiliates who would be happy to be interviewed. We would be happy to visit you anywhere in the UK. This would not only give you the chance to promote yourself for free but give you the chance to help new affiliates. If you are interested please contact us here.
If you read webmaster forums you will have noticed that many webmaster are to say the least upset that the quarterly page rank export have not occurred yet. This of course has sent some webmasters in to panic mode. Google normally exports the page rank data every 3 months although this is not always the case. Let’s look at the history of the page rank updates for the last couple of years.
Toolbar Page Rank updated on April 03rd 2010
Toolbar Page Rank updated on December 30th 2009
Toolbar Page Rank updated on October 30th 2009
Toolbar Page Rank updated on June 25th 2009
Toolbar Page Rank updated on May 27th 2009
Toolbar Page Rank updated on April 1st 2009
Toolbar Page Rank updated on December 31st 2008
Toolbar Page Rank updated on September 26th 2008
Toolbar Page Rank updated on July 25th 2008
Toolbar Page Rank updated on April 30th 2008
As you can see from the above data sometimes the interval between updates can be up to 4 months although normally it is indeed around 3 months. So why do so many webmaster get so upset and agitated when the page rank update is overdue? Should we really care?
Well the trouble is many webmasters make their living by simply selling links on sites with page rank. They use the interval between updates to manipulate the page rank values of their sites, simply to cash in once the page rank values have been updated. A delay in the Google Page Rank export results in the Page Rank sellers having to wait to cash in on their new Page Rank values.
In simple terms Google has created a monster which they can’t control, until in my opinion Page Rank is either not visible or scrapped.
In you are looking to jump in to an industry that will see rapid growth during the next few years then the online gambling sector is a must. Online gambling is still one of the fastest growing sectors. A report published by H2 Gambling Capital stated the size of the global online gambling market is a staggering $21 billion. The report also stated that by 2012 the market could be worth at least $30 billion. Of course at the moment online gambling is illegal in many countries. If the likes of America, China, Japan or South Korea legalized and regulated online gambling then of course the projected 2012 figures will be greatly overshadowed.
A UK National Gamers Survey Report revealed British gamblers spent 280 million playing online casual games in 2009. Similar studies carried out in other countries revealed that French players spent 220 million and Germans 440 million over the same period. There are an estimated 13.3 million Brits playing on various game portals plus 170 million was spent on mobile games in 2009.
Deutsche bank claims online gaming market penetration is expected to reach 9 percent by 2012, with global online gaming having recorded growth of 23 percent since 2001. Also of great importance is that home broadband users are expected to reach 750m by 2012 (up from 481m in 2008), coupled with rising online gaming regulation across the world, these forecasts look very achievable.
I believe that affiliate and general webmaster forums can be a great resource for new and experienced affiliates. Perhaps though for some, they can be a hindrance. I have come to this conclusion tonight after talking to someone who has great potential, but at the present time has not managed to turn great content in to revenue.
Of course affiliate forums have a range of members that range from those that are starting out in the industry to those at the highest level. Forums also contain some members who simply have gained respect from past history although they may no longer be making a cent. I would also say that affiliate forums contain a range of advice that can range from extremely poor to superb. This is of course the nature of all forums. In general I’m not one to give out trust to anybody simply because someone may tell me that a certain member has credibility. Remember the Blonde Poker scam story?
I believe too many new affiliates latch on to advice that is posted in forums. In many cases giving the advice far more credibility then it deserves. I believe we all . at least to some degree have “sheep” mentality built in to our genes. We almost have to fight the urge to jump in with the crowd. For instance, if a well known forum guru posts that a certain technique works well, then a percentage of the members of that forum will instantly give the technique 100% credibility. It simply has to be true because the guru said so. The same of course can also be said for any technique that is stated to be a waste of time.
Perhaps a good example is the myth that banners are poor in regards to generating clicks. I know of many affiliates who no longer use banners as they now only use text call to actions. Why would they use banners when the forum gurus have said many times that banners simply don’t convert? The “don’t use banners” advice is in general, too sweeping a statement. I have had great success using custom banners which have helped me increases conversions by well over 120%. Even a very well known site that was purchased by Poker Stars recently, was renowned for using standard banners to great effect. The same of course can be said for other techniques that have either been dismissed or “pumped up” on affiliate forums.
Don’t be a sheep! Take time out to test different techniques on your sites so you start to work on actual results rather than hearsay. Affiliate forums can be a great resource, of that there is no doubt. Simply don’t believe everything you read!
I’m sure many think about becoming affiliates but pass on the idea as they wrongly think they don’t have the skills required to become successful. I thought that perhaps writing about what is required to make it as an affiliate would be of benefit to some.
Firstly many believe that to build even a couple of decent websites you need a healthy bankroll. This simply is not true. You can host multiple websites for just a few dollars a month. You can use WordPress for your sites, which of course is free, plus you can even utilise free WordPress themes that will give your sites a semi pro look. Even customising your site with a custom designed header, will only cost you around $20, if you post a contest on Digital Point.
Many also worry that they don’t have the technical skills to build sites although this should not be a major concern. WordPress can be installed in less than a few minutes with just a couple of clicks. If you want to learn how to modify your WordPress installations then there are thousands upon thousands of WordPress tutorials online.
Many worry that SEO is simply too technical, but again this is a myth. There are indeed many so called SEO specialist who spew out eloquent articles on affiliate and webmaster forums but most of these are simply pampering their own egos. SEO is not rocket science. If I’m honest I would recommend that you take advice from successful affiliates rather then so called SEO experts. Successful affiliates become “jack of all trades” with perhaps the most important skill they have is the ability to create content that sells, which of course is a skill that many SEO specialist don’t have.
In my opinion the most important attributes required are to be self motivated and simply to really want success badly. I would always back a self motivated individual with zero IT or marketing skills over somebody who even had a level or IT and marketing experience. You simply have to want it! I know many who could make it as an affiliate but they simply lack discipline. Think about it! Even if you only write 3 articles a day for one site, after a year the site will have 1000 pages. How many affiliates create a site with 1000 pages? Very few!
Many gambling affiliates simply use article marketing to build links. They are happy to spin articles endless times so that the final content ends up as eligible crap. I believe links on article directories such as Ezines and Article Base were devalued by Google late last year. This though does not mean that submitting articles to these directories is a waste of time.
Using long tail key phrases it is possible to post an article on a quality article directory and rank extremely highly for the key phrase within minutes. As Google classes the quality article directories as authority sites new content is indexed straight away plus in many cases outranking similar content on non authority sites.
Don’t believe me? Use Google to search for the phrase “Roulette Tip” or even “Roulette Tip”
See how the article ranks top for “Roulette Tip” and 3rd for “Roulette Tips”. Let’s take a look at the number of views this article has received.
The key of course is to find the right long tail key phrases to target plus to have a couple of great call to actions in the resource box so you get a great CTR. Read my article on Article Marketing if you would like to try this for yourself.
I really do feel for those new to the gambling affiliate industry for many different reasons. Firstly if you post on any affiliate forum simply asking for advice you will get many different answers. As I have said before there are many ways to skin a cat so the method you choose should of course be the method that is most suitable to you. Don’t look for a magic formula that will work for all as it does not exist. I reckon many new affiliates end up wasting up to a year or more, half trying recommended strategies before finding a strategy that they are happy with.
Known Your Strengths
There is no point starting out to create an authority poker strategy site unless you can write well, plus have a great understanding of the game. If you have a decent budget then you could outsource your content but you will have to seek out quality writers. I will say quality poker strategy writers are few and far between. This is of course is common sense. I’m sorry to say though that there are many poker strategy type sites with badly composed articles with what can only be describes as abysmal strategy advice. Also note that many affiliates run out of ideas after they have created up to 50 articles. Remember Google loves quality content! Google loves big sites! Google hates thin authority sites!
Don’t Expect Instant Success
Many jump in to the affiliate industry because they think they will achieve instant success. In most cases this is 100% bollocks! In the real world sites take time to earn trust with search engines and of course readers. Back links need to be added at a steady and regular pace as so does content. Simply adding just 2 quality articles to a site with good optimised content over a year will provide decent traffic. Adding a handful of quality back links each week will boost rankings of semi competitive key phrases. Building a new site is not a sprint it is a marathon.
Only Promote Quality Brands
I strongly believe that quality counts! Many affiliates waste their time on poor brands that simply don’t have the conversion power of quality brands. I believe that my sites are only as good as the brands they are promoting.
Dedicate Yourself!
If you want to become a successful affiliate then you have to work at it. Build quality content daily! Build quality links every week! Many affiliates fail because in reality they are lazy and so neglect their sites. You have to really want success! Don’t waste time watching TV when you should be creating quality content.
Don’t Rely On Google
Don’t put all your eggs in one basket! There are many other ways to generate traffic for your sites other than Google. Many affiliates have had healthy incomes wiped out virtually overnight due to Google algorithm changes. Remember to target social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. Target video sites such as Youtube and Vimeo. Offline marketing can also be very beneficial.
This article follows on from my earlier List Building Techniques article. Many struggle to think of subject matter for an eBook so I thought I would do a bit of brainstorming for you. Let’s think about possible content for a sports betting eBook.
Over the last few years sports betting has really evolved with many online sports betting sites now offering in-play betting plus more markets for each game or race than ever before. If you take an hour or so to read many sports betting affiliate sites most only cover the basics type of bets. Many affiliate sites are covering World Cup games but only predicting and giving advice on who will win, or the actual score. There are dozens are markets for each World Cup game including:
Team To Win 1st Half
Team To Win 2nd Half
Half Time Score
Full Time Score
Over Under 1.5 Goals
Over Under 2.5 Goals
Over Under 3.5 Goals
Over Under 4.5 Goals
Number Of Bookings
Total Corners
The above are just a few of the markets that are available for every soccer game. There are many more! Most punters simply bet on a team to win plus perhaps the actual score. How about creating an eBook on all the types of bets available?
You could even monitor the sites that offer in-play betting during a game then write an eBook detailing which sites offer the best value. If you check the in-play odds of even a few sites during a game you will find that some sites do indeed offer better odds than others.
How about monitoring the over / under odds during a game on a couple of sites? You could even spend a few hours doing a little research, looking at the teams who are still in the World Cup. If they tend to score early then perhaps they are great value to win the 1st half? If one game features 2 teams with good defences then perhaps over / under 1.5 goals could be suggested as a great bet.
Many affiliates will not do any of the above simply because it involves extra work. Those who do will be the ones who prosper.
As I have said before SEO is not that difficult. I think that the trouble with many affiliates is that they are looking for shortcuts or in many ways the easy option. We all known that Google is doing its upmost to clamp down on link sellers plus of course trying at the very least to discount purchased links. Let me relate back to only a year ago with my experience with building links on articles.
Last year I had great success submitting articles on article directory sites. I worked on 5 or 6 key phrases, managing to get 1st page rankings for all key phrases, with very little effort. All I did to obtain these rankings was create a few articles, spin them, and auto post them on the top 100 article sites. I will be honest and say I used a program called Article Post Robot. Article Post Robot automates the posting process plus gives you the ability to change many aspects of every article posted. I would simply spend an hour or two preparing the articles then let the script submit them whilst I slept.
I even told a friend exactly what I was doing and at I point we both were fighting for a well known UK sports book key phrases both ranking on the 1st page of Google’s search results. During late October last year, virtually overnight, all ranking were lost. It was clear that Google had changed its algorithm to give less weight to links on articles. Google now is really getting to grips with affiliates so now more than ever you need to think like Google.
So what are the best links to build?
What is the best placement for links?
Firstly any links that are easy to obtain are in most cases complete waste of time. Links such as forum signatures, article resource box links and most social network links are virtually worthless. Please note though that I said most! You may get some short terms results, but long term these types of links are of no value so any rankings gained will be lost. You will also run the risk of receiving a penalty from Google. Trust me I know all about Google penalties as I have experienced many over the years.
In regards to link placement, just take a moment to think for a minute. What type of links do you see in sidebars? What type of links do you see in footers? Let’s be honest and say that perhaps 99% of the time these types of links are paid links. Don’t you think Google realises this? Links in the actual body text are in most cases genuine resource links. These are the type of links you should be putting your energy into acquiring.
I believe Google is devaluing more types of links than ever before. Over the past few months many affiliates have had sites dropped out of the Google index. Many complain that their sites have had strong back links but on closer inspection it is clear that many of their links were paid links. In my opinion, in content links surrounded by a paragraph or two of relevant content have never been more powerful!
The next Google Page Rank Update should occur within the next week which will create a stir on most webmaster forums. Why though is Page Rank so important to many? Many webmasters generate their entire income from Page Rank. Google may well state that webmasters should not sell links on their sites but the reality is that Google itself has created most of the link selling market. As I have said before most webmaster only use Page Rank plus perhaps the number of outbound links to determine the quality of urls. This is of course a big mistake.
Since the conception of Page Rank many webmasters simply build sites with the sole intention of gaining a decent Page Ranks so they can sell links. I know of many webmasters making a good living from link sales alone. I also have witness some links sold for unbelievable prices. In my book Google has created a monster. It is clear that no matter what Google states in regards to links sales they have no chance of stopping the link sale gravy train whilst visible Page Rank exists. As you may have already guessed I would like to see Google scrap its Page Rank system.
Just imagine that tomorrow Google did indeed scrap Page Rank. What metrics would you use to gauge the quality of sites and their internal pages? Let me tell you that if most webmasters ignored Page Rank, instead judging the quality of sites using other metrics than PR, then they would be able to find far better sites for back links.
So that’s my rant over let’s get back to the real world as I simply can’t see Google scraping Page Rank in the near future.
How To Monitor Page Rank
Many new webmaster are confused in regards to all the fuss about page rank so let’s cover the basics. To see the page rank of any webpage you can either visit a page rank checking site such as www.checkpagerank.net or add a tool to your browser so that for every page you can see page rank. I prefer to use the Firefox add on SEO Status Page Rank / Alexa Toolbar. This add-on loads a visible toolbar on every page I visit. See below.
As you can see the toolbar displays Page Rank and Alexa plus has an option to check a sites back links with just one click. It also has an option to Dig Page Rank which is the ability to see sites Page Rank on dozens of different Google Date Centres. The Dig PR option is only really useful when Google is exporting new Page Rank values. At first the new values only appear on one or two data centres thus the need for the Dig PR option. If you use the Dig PR option during a Page Rank export you will at first see one or two data centres with different values. These values are in effect the sites new Page Rank score. Within 48 hours the new values are spread to all data centres.
Of course we know that Google tweaks its algorithm most days. The reality is that most of these tweaks go unnoticed and have little effect in regards to rankings. This year we have already seen major changes to the Google algorithm during Feb, late April and June. Google has admitted that that in regards to long tail search queries they have indeed changed their algorithm. Many affiliates are reporting other problems in regards to getting new sites indexed plus even perhaps a new extended sandbox.
New sites targeting competitive key phrases have been receiving a penalty for a few years. Google freely admits that this is the case, as have webmasters, whom named this penalty, the Google Sandbox. I have experienced the Google Sandbox many times with new sites. I would launch a new site adding a few quality links which would give the site a decent ranking. If the site was targeting competitive key phrases I could guarantee that the site would lose its obtained ranking within 2 to 4 weeks. In my opinion there were several factors which determined how long the site would be “sandboxed”. Some of the factors included:
Back Links Quality
Back Links Quantity
Back Links Age
The Competitiveness of the Key Phrases Targeted
Up until this year I found that sites targeting uncompetitive key phrases were not sandboxed or if sandboxed were quickly returned to the main index. Competitive key phrases, from my experiences were sandboxed for as little as 2 weeks up to 6 months. It seemed clear to many that part of Google’s algorithm did include a trust rank.
Many webmaster realised the above factors were true with many developing methods to bypass the Google Sandbox. I also practised these methods with great success. This year though things changed!
After the February Google algorithm update and more so after the May Day Google Long Tail Google update many webmasters were reported that they were struggling to get new sites indexed. Many webmasters also reported that new site’s pages that did get indexed were receiving very little long tail traffic. To many it seemed clear that the Google Sandboxed had been extended. Perhaps extra conditions had been added to Google’s Trust Rank?
From early March 2010 I tested others claims by launching new sites. I will say that I was amazed to encounter the same problems others were reporting. I too found that my new sites were taking longer to be indexed plus when pages were indexed long tail traffic was nonexistent. I do though love a challenge so I started to find ways to bypass the new Google Sandbox or should I say to increase my new sites Trust Ranking.
After nearly 4 months of testing I’m certain that Google has extended the so called Sandbox. I strongly believe that part of the Google algorithm does include a Trust Rank. Webmaster will to have to adapt to the algorithm changes. Those in the know will know that there is more to link building that simply building links with a high page rank. It seems clear to me that some sites can have a high trust rank even though they have no or little page rank.
Let’s completely forget about page rank for the moment and think about trust rank. It is common knowledge that good sites rarely links to bad sites although bad sites will link to good sites. Could it be possible that some sites have a high trust rank so become part of a seed set feeding Trust Rank to other sites? Could it also be possible that some high PR sites could now be flagged by Google as simply spam sites (low trust rank)? Perhaps after the next Google Page Rank update we will see sites increase Page Rank but as they still have a low Trust Rank they still will struggle to obtain decent long tail traffic from Google? Perhaps new sites simply need to increase their trust rank?
The next Google Page Rank update is expected within the next week or two. Perhaps then we will have a better understanding of what is happening.
There has been much debate regarding the popularity of poker this year with many such as myself stating that poker is in decline. Can we really say the poker boom is well and truly over? What metric can we use to determine the current popularity of poker? Well for the purpose of this article I’m mainly going to reference to the UK poker scene, in particularly the live poker scene.
As an old git I can relate back to live poker before the online poker boom. I use to play at the flea bitten card room at Stanley’s Casino, Derby. On a good night we would have 20 players for the £20 rebuy, whilst on a bad night we were down to a single table. Of course the online poker boom had a massive effect on card rooms around the UK. Virtually overnight the attendance at Stanley’s shot up to 50, 60 or sometimes over 70. This of course was mirrored all around the UK. A few years ago perhaps the best card room in Europe was built in Nottingham which was just a 20 minutes drive from my home. Instead of playing a £20 rebuy at Stanley’s I was now playing £25 and £50 buy ins at DTD with up to 200 runners. How times had changed!
Casinos throughout the UK started to cash in on the poker boom with most card rooms packed out for their regular holdem tournaments. Even the G-Casino chain cashed in on the boom creating the GUKPT poker tour, a poker festival each month at a different venue around the UK with the main event being a £1000 buy in.
So what is the state of play now? Is live poker still thriving? Well I’m sorry to say that it is very clear that live poker in the UK is in decline. Virtually every GUKPT event this year, compared to last year, has seen reduced entries. The £25 midweek buy in event at DTD that used to attract up to 200 runners is now struggling to attract 70. Even EPT events seem to be attracting fewer entries compared to last year.
As the number of online poker players increased it was very clear that many of these filtered to the live poker scene. It now seems clear that as the number of online poker players decrease, this results in less players buying into live poker events.
I know many affiliates will be in denial, perhaps blaming the decline on the World Cup or even say the decline is seasonal. To me though, these arguments are not valid, as the decline has been in progress for perhaps the last year.
I’m not saying that poker is going to die, but it does seem clear to me that interest in the game is levelling off. We desperately need legalised online gambling in the US, which many suggest could create another boom.
I will admit I can be a miserable old sod but some things really do wind me up. One of my major pets hates is how the same SEO debates seem to reappear time and time again on affiliate forums. Perhaps the greatest offender is the debate on the extra bonus in regards to rankings of exact match domains. I simply hate this debate! To be honest I’m sick and tired of it. Before I start to rant let me quote what Matt Cutts has stated about exact match domains on many occasions.
“Owning a keyword match domain name is going to carry some weight in Google for the foreseeable future”
So there you have it! Straight from the main man himself! You would of course think that the above statement would put an end to the debate but I’m sorry to say this is not the case. The doubters simply check a key phrase in Google then offer a counter view as an exact match domain is being outranked by a non exact match domain. This is of course crazy! Matt Cutts did not state that owning a keyword match domain has immense weight, he simply said some weight.
Rather than debating a known fact that keyword match domains in Google’s algorithm do indeed get a boost, which we know is true. We should try to find out how much they are weighted in the Google algorithm as this is the key. For example, breaking this down to the very basics. Let’s say that exact match domains are weighted to an extent where they are credited with 50 links of x quality and the top 5 search results have over 100 links of x quality then of course the exact match domain is going to rank BELOW them. This ties in with the scenario when some purchase exact match domains and are disappointed when they don’t rank top 3 or even top 10. Remember exact match domains get credited with extra weight which is not a guarantee to rank top 3.
Niche online forums can be a great source of information. For example relating to the gambling affiliate niche signing up to Poker Affiliate Listing is simply a must. PAL is a niche forum for those who work as gambling affiliates although members also include operators, content writers and link sellers. Buried amongst the fluff you will find some great posts. Remember though, as in the case of all forums, the range of expertise and post quality will range from poor to superb. This is the case with all forums.
Form experience of running online forums for many years I will tell you to take what you read with a pinch of salt. I read many webmaster type forums and stumble on claims of new SEO techniques most months. I may test out these techniques on test sites or pages, but being an old sceptic I will never believe anything I read on a forum until I have tested the technique myself. I will say the same for those who have built up their own reputations online. Until I’m sure that I trust them 100% then to me their reputation means nothing.
In general on many forums especially webmaster and affiliate forums many of the members are “wannabes”. Despite what many say, making money online takes a hell of a lot of work and dedication with most failing to do so. Time and time again I have seen the wannabes jump on the latest bandwagon and be exploited by experience marketeers selling the latest sure fire technique that they claim will help affiliates make a fortune.
Perhaps the greatest example of how an online reputation can be built and exploited is the recent story of Neil Blatchly from the UK Blonde Poker Forum. Blatchly was a long term member of the Blonde Poker forum who many held in high regard. Last year he posted a staking thread asking for backers so he could test his sports betting trading techniques on the Betfair Exchange. With initially just a few backers he started to post amazing stories of his success plus of course stated how well his backer’s investments were doing. As you can imagine many jumped on the bandwagon with Blatchly taking up to £120K in stakes from many members of the forum.
Each week he would post about how well his system was working gaining almost god like status on the forum. During the last month or so a couple of members started to get suspicious so they asked an experienced sports betting trader to take a look at Blatchly’s data on the forum. The trader (arbboy) posted some valid comments on the forum which raised some valid concerned in regards to what Blatchly was doing. The masses of the Blonde Forum simply could not believe that their hero was up to no good. As you can imagine rather than looking into what arbboy was saying most members of the forum simply dismissed his posts treating him like some sort of troll. So what did the mods of the Blonde Forum do? Well they banned arbboy.
As you well may now have guessed arbboy was proved to be right as Blatchly’s sports betting trading system was no more than a scam. He had indeed traded but had been skimming the trades plus “degened” many thousands away on roulette and horse racing. He even treated his family to a 5 star holiday in Miami! It is not for me to say who should be blamed for the Blonde Poker fiasco I’m simply using the case to prove to you how online reputations can in reality mean very little.
Again I will say that the chances you will become successful affiliates are slim. The chances that you will become a full time affiliate are even more remote. There is though more than one way to skin a cat. Even if your sites fail to generate affiliate income your sites can still become a cash cow.
There is no doubt that quality links in the gambling niche are much harder to obtain than links in virtually every other niche. Many webmasters working in general niches will simply not allow gambling links on their sites as they worry they will lose their Google Adsense affiliate account. General affiliates that do allow gambling links on the whole have crappy spam sites so as you can imagine links on their sites have little or no value.
If you struggle to generate income from affiliate revenue you do have the option of generating income from links sales. You must of course ensure that your sites are quality sites, plus of course you do not want to turn your sites into link farms. In regards to links sales, the web currency is dollars. Before we proceed a word of warning! Google states that webmaster should not sell links. Google also states that webmasters who do sell links will be penalised. From experience I can tell you that if you are reported or even caught by Google selling links your site could be stripped of any Google Page Rank it may have obtained. Some sites have also lost their rankings due to link sales. Despite Google’s stance on link sellers, the link selling market is immense. At the end of the day quality links are the main factor for sites ranking, so as you can imagine webmaster are going to do there upmost to obtain quality links.
Golden Rules For Link Sellers
If you intend to sell site wide links in your sidebar don’t be foolish and give the title of your links section a name such as “Sponsors” or “Links” etc. It is common sense to give this section of your site a title such as “Great Resources” or “My Favourite Sites” etc.
Never advertise the fact on your site that your are prepared to sell links. An “advertised here” link which links to a page with link sales prices is extremely foolish.
Never include the actual site name in a thread advertising your links. Remember Google crawls virtually every web page plus you open yourself up to someone simply reporting your site to Google.
Don’t overdo it! Don’t get greedy! I have seen some webmaster have over 20 external links in their side bar which are obvious links sales. These will vastly dilute the actual PR of the site plus will give potential buyers poor value. In general the fewer external links on the page the juicier the page which makes it more attractive to link buyers.
Different Types Of Link Sales
For the purpose of this article let’s imagine that you have quality sports betting website that has a Google Page Rank of 3 (PR3).
Site Wide Links
Many webmaster prefer to purchase site wide links. Basically these are links that appear on every page of your website. If your site uses a blog CMS such as WordPress then links in your sidebar will be popular. Gambling webmaster expect to pay $30 to $50 per month for site wide PR3 gambling links.
Home Page In Content Links
These perhaps are my favourite type of links. Home Page In Content Links look more natural than site wide links as the link appear in at least a couple of lines of text. A good example of this sort of link would be….
If you can drag yourself away from the World Cup action there are some great Poker Bonuses available at the moment. Poker Stars are offering all new sign ups up to $600 Free!
A link anchored to the text “Poker Bonuses” looks far less like a paid link than a link in the side bar. Again for a PR3 home page link you could expect at the very least $30 to $50 per month.
Internal Page In Content Links
These types of links are similar to Home Page In Content Links but of course appear in internal pages. To aid the page rank development of internal pages make sure important internal pages are linked site wide on your website. A good example is the page links that appear in the side bar of this site (look right). Also ensure that you build links to internal pages. Again expect $30 to $50 per month for these types of links.
Blog / Article Posts Links
These are simply full blog posts or articles that contain links posted on a site. Personally I don’t like to see blog posts with more than 2 links as I think they look spammy. In most cases webmaster will offer to add a blog post or article to their site written by a webmaster of another site. Some link sellers will even offer to write the article. I’m a great fan of these type of “in content” links as they look natural plus you can really push your site including either links or in some cases a couple of great “calls to action”.
Prices vary depending on the quality of the site plus also depending if the seller has to write the article. Many link sellers will ask for a “one off” price so that the article will exist on the site forever, whilst others will ask for a monthly or quarterly price. I know of a couple of webmaster who have a small network of quality sites and make a decent income from selling blog posts each week. Prices can range for as low as $10 to $100+ for permanent blog posts.
Even with 3 or 4 quality gambling sites it is clear that you can generate decent income from links sales alone, although you will always be at the mercy of Google. You could generate further income by creating quality content for gambling webmasters but I think I will cover that topic in a future article.
There is no doubt that this year Google has turned up the heat on affiliate sites. Affiliates sites have been hit hard with 2 updates during Feb and late April / May this year. Many thought this was the end of the onslaught but this has been proved not to be the case with more reports of sites being hit during June. So what is the state of play so far? How are the updates affecting affiliate sites?
Firstly it seems new sites are harder to index than ever before for competitive key phrases, whilst new sites targeting uncompetitive key phrases still seem easy to index.
Many new sites that are fully indexed are not generating any long tail traffic. This seems to be part of the so called May Day update. It looks like the existing Google Sandbox has been extended with sites needing to generate far more trust before Google will rank the site’s long tail key phrases.
Many established aged sites scraping products from merchants using well known affiliates type scripts have been wiped out the index. In the past it has become clear that Google does indeed target affiliate scripts. What is worrying about recent events is that even sites using bespoke scripts have been hit.
There also is no doubt that users are also using Google search options such as latest, last 24 hours and past 4 days etc which again will affect affiliate traffic.
To get a better understanding of how to combat the Google updates then perhaps we should take a look at sites that have increased their traffic during recent updates. Big brand type sites with 500+ pages of quality content with a steady flow of new content added daily it seems are thriving!
My advice at this stage would be simply to build quality sites. Move away from building thin affiliate sites with exact match domains in favour of big brand type sites. Make your site unique so keep away from standard affiliate templates plus of course well known affiliate scripts.
If your network comprises of thin exact match domain affiliate sites be afraid, be very afraid as Google is killing affiliate sites. Two major updates during Feb & May this year has seen affiliate sites hit like never before across many different niches. The attack on affiliate sites has been in progress for some time although it clearly looks like this year Google has stepped up the attacks. Over the past couple of years I have seen many affiliate sites hit. It started with those using scripts to scrape Ebay & Amazon data with Google simply targeting sites using well known scripts. What does amaze me about the latest sites to be hit is than many were using custom scripts. I believe the tweak to the long tail algo is also responsible for many affiliate sites being hit. There is no doubt that many affiliate sites simply targeting the same product titles (long tail key phrases) have been hit extremely hard.
Luckily for me I made the switch away from thin exact match domain sites in favour of building big brand type sites over 2 years ago. I will tell you that my quality brand sites have increased long tail traffic since the Feb & May Day Google updates. I have though seen a drop in rankings in some of my lower quality sites which if I’m honest deserve to lose rankings. Now here is my take on the latest updates although it is up to you how much you make on my comments.
It is clear that Google has been targeting affiliate sites by simply looking at well known product scripts many affiliates have been using. This started last year with the demise of those using scripts such as PHPBay. To me it seems clear that any affiliates using well known affiliate scripts in their sites should be worried. The same perhaps can also be said for those using well known affiliate templates. If your sites are using either of these then you can easily be identified as an affiliate site and so you are a potential target to be hit. Don’t be a bloody sheep! Make your sites unique!
Don’t fall in to the exact match domain trap! Many new affiliates simple over estimate search volume anyway, only generating a trickle of traffic for their actual domain. As I have said many times, a decent branded site crammed with quality content will have far more SERP power than a thin exact match domain site. Build a brand and build it big!
I also believe many types of links have now been devalued. Many affiliates waste time with links that have no value. I would rather have a handful of quality links than thousands of forum signature links, blog comment links and even link exchange links on weak pages. The truth of the matter is that decent authority sites can end up with powerful internal links that can easily outrank even exact match domains. Build a brand and build it big!
My next comment I know is controversial and will piss many off but let’s be honest. Google wants to provide its users with quality content. In regards to many affiliate sites this simply has not been happening. We all know in the past it has been far too easy to jump on the affiliate gravy train. With a decent bankroll you could simply buy a quality exact match domain, buy an affiliate theme, load a rake back script then you simply could get your cheque book out buy quality links. In time this would give you a decent ranking plus of course great revenue if you knew what you were doing.
I’m not saying Google has got it right yet, but I believe it is on the right track. The recent updates, plus what is going to come, will hit affiliates hard. Affiliates are going to have to adapt by building quality authority sites which in the long term will equate to better search results from Google.
For my next few posts I’m going to run through some of the myths regarding Google. For some reason webmaster have become paranoid regarding Google statements, or in many cases rumours of Google statements. Don’t believe everything you read on SEO or affiliate forums!
Google Penalises Webmaster That Buy Links
This is simply not true. I have never witnessed any webmaster receiving any sort of penalty for buying links. If you check the back links for some of the big players in the gambling affiliate industry you will find that in many cases they have spend a small fortune on links. Google is though known for slapping penalties on link seller’s sites. The penalties result in the site losing some or all of their Google Page Rank plus in some cases their rankings. If Google did issue penalties for buying links then you could simply buy links for your competitors then report them, thus destroying their rankings.
Duplicate Content Is Penalised By Google
Again this is simply not true. Google will discount links that appear on duplicate content but there is no evidence what so ever that duplicate content is penalised. If you think about a big breaking news story in many cases the story is syndicated over hundreds of sites. It simply would be crazy for Google to penalise these sites. So if 10 sites published the exact same story which one and how many would rank? I carried out a test last year submitting the same articles to 20 article directory websites. Within 2 weeks I could see 12 versions of the article on Google search pages 1 to 7. After just a couple of weeks the back links from the articles increased the rankings of the key phrases used. During the next few weeks many articles starting to be removed from the Google index and of course the rankings gained started to drop. After 5 weeks, only 2 versions of the article remained in the Google index.
Taking this a step further I started to build quality links to one of the articles that had been removed from the index. After around 4 weeks this version of the article had the highest Google ranking. It is clear that when Google finds duplicate content it takes the metrics of the site where the content is held plus the links to the article into consideration. In theory you could copy someone’s article, build quality links to it, outranking the original content perhaps even knocking it out of the index.
Only Build Links That Are Relevant To Your Niche
You guessed it, again this is not true. Many quality affiliate webmaster will acquire links on sites that are not relevant to their niche. In many cases they will do so for page rank juice. I have experienced this with test sites in the gambling niche, acquiring links from sites that were not even remotely close to relevant to the niche of my test site. The test site acquired decent rankings and a healthy page rank.
Becoming a successful gambling affiliate is no easy task. Many dream of working a couple of hours a day whilst raking in thousands each month. Of course it is not like that. Those who make it work hard and are of course dedicated. Building a successful site or even network takes a great deal of time and effort.
As we know Google changes, online gambling is evolving and of course so are our reader’s requirements. Even when we get to the stage where our sites our generating a decent monthly income we should not switch off simply because we think we have made it.
For those just starting out in the gambling affiliate industry, or perhaps those struggling, take a few minutes to watch the video below. You simply will not get better advice!
Please excuse this article because the main person I’m writing this for is myself. Yes this is very self indulgent but perhaps it will spur me on to get these tasks actually done. These are tasks that I know will make me more money but as they are in many ways awkward I have put them off for years.
Target Other Demographics
I am so stupid! I promote UK gambling sites to UK residents even though the UK market is saturated with gambling affiliates. I would say the UK and US markets are the toughest of all. Why oh why have I not already spent a few days to get some of my sales pages translated to target softer European countries. Many of the UK gambling sites even have landing pages for other European countries which would help conversions no end. So why have I not bothered? All I need to do is find somebody who offers a decent translation service plus spend an hour or two adding an “International” section to some of my sites. I will get this done this week!
Tidy Up Half Finished Sites
Like many affiliates I have many sites that I have started but then deserted them as my time was either needed elsewhere or I decide the site was simply not going to work. At the very least I should tidy up these sites so they are more presentable. I could then add links to help my SERPs of my earning sites. Perhaps even target a new key phrase or two.
Server upgrade
This is the big one! My main server is two years old which is over 70 in human years, LOL. A new server would give me more CPU power, more RAM and more disk space for the same price. Yes it could be a pain to get everything transferred but in the long run I know it is worth the effort. This would be a great time to reorganise all my sites so I’m more efficient. I will get this done next month!
I want this site to be an honest guide for those new to the gambling affiliate industry. There are many great aspects to working in this industry although there are also drawbacks.
I will be honest and say that in general the gambling affiliate world is knee deep in bullshit. From crappy new gambling affiliate programs that have virtually zero chance of long term success to utter garbage that is spewed on affiliate forums. As a new affiliate you need to develop some form of bullshit detector pretty sharpish.
Many times over the last five years I have seen many piss poor garbage skins being promoted as the latest super hot program that is going to make affiliates a fortune. I steer well clear of skins since I got my fingers severely burnt by the Microgaming / Tusk fiasco that saw many poker players lose their entire bankrolls. Of course Microgaming just sat back and did sweet FA. Skins are in general high risk. Skins on small networks are extremely high risk. The recent Aced Poker saga is a prime example why I will never promote any site on the Merge network. Let’s be honest about Merge. Merge has been open to US player for years but still remains one of the smaller networks. If the Merge network was even close to being a quality network then it would have vastly increased its numbers during the last few years
If you read about a new technique to boost your rankings on an affiliate or SEO forum then you can virtually guarantee that the technique has been flogged to death and is no longer of any use. I will be honest and say each year there are indeed a few techniques that come to light that do generate great results but these techniques are strongly guarded. Once they become available to the masses (and of course Google) they quickly become ineffective. I’m sorry to say though that many new affiliates want instant success so you can virtually guarantee that just like sheep they will follow the hype.
When I select a program to promote I believe I am putting my name to the program. I’m never going to promote any program that I’m not 100% positive is trustworthy, offers quality game play, offers my players value plus has great support. I strongly believe that if I only offer the very best programs to my readers that I can build a long term relationship with them ensuring that they will return to my sites time and time again. Don’t treat your readers like idiots. If you give a piss poor program a great review simply to line your own pockets then don’t expect your readers to trust your affiliate site again.
After testing I would like to say that I no longer think that it is detrimental to use dropped domains. Just a couple of months ago I launched a new site using a domain that had been dropped several times without any penalty. Looking at search results I can now see several new domains targeting semi competitive key phrases again without any noticeable penalty.
Prior to this year’s Feb and May algo update there was no doubt that dropped domain simply did not rank as well as other aged domains especially for competitive key phrases. It now seems clear to me that this is no longer the case.
I have posted about this on a few affiliates forums with to say the least a like warm response. I will say again that during the Google updates in Feb and May 2010 the Google Sandbox effect has been extended. New sites are being hit harder than ever before. I picked up on this after the Feb update as I noticed new sites were in many cases getting no long tail traffic. At last I’m starting to see on some affiliate forums that many with newish sites are posting that they have lost most if not all of their Google traffic. Now I know many will say, sit back, let the dust settle and let’s see how things are in 6 months time. This though is no use to me! If we all just sat back then we all would get nowhere! I wrote a few lines about The New Google Sandbox last week so if you have not read that post read it.
So following on from my previous post I now have 3 news sites. One is ranking superbly, one is just starting to show signs of life in Google plus the third has been launched this week. I have also passed on the methods used to a friend to combat the new Google sandbox effect. So far he is getting very little Google traffic but he simply needs to wait. I believe my second site is the key site. I strongly believe this will rank nicely in Google within a couple of weeks. I believe my friend’s site will also “kick in” within a couple of weeks and rank highly. I’m not going to use the new methods on the third site so I can gauge how long the new sandbox effect takes to be removed naturally.
I must admit I enjoy the challenge of fighting Google’s new algo changes. I have over 70 sites which range from 3 pages to over 300,000 pages, from thin sites to content rich sites and from new sites to sites over 5 years old. Because I have such a wide spread of different sites, I am in a better position than most to understand the effects of new Google updates. I can simply examine the data from my sites before and after the updates to see what has actually occurred. I picked up on the May Day Long Tale algo update within a couple of days although many dismissed any form of algo update.
As affiliates we have to rise to the challenges that Google sets us. There will be many algo updates that will hit us hard for years to come. Those that are prepared for major changes and willing to search out solutions will prosper more than those who simply wait for others to provide solutions.
Ask SEO consultants about the power of links from directories and most will tell you that directories are no more than link farms. I will tell you that this simply is not true! Of course I realise some directories are indeed no better than spam sites but I will say there are some real gems out there.
When I first started out as a gambling affiliate I will be honest and say I simple purchased my rankings. Each quarter I would spend a small fortune on links. Looking back I did not have a clue about the quality of links I was buying as I simply purchased links with PR as many affiliates still do today. I soon realised this was false economy as I would have to keep renewing links for eternity. Now I’m not saying that I will never buy links again, or I’m not saying that gambling affiliates should or should not be buying links. I’m just saying that I wanted to increase my ROI by not spending so much each quarter. The answer was to build my own network.
During the last couple of years I have built a decent network that feeds my earning sites. Part of this network I will admit consists of gambling directories. As I now understand url and domain metrics I can tell you that many of my directories have great power and can quickly increase the SERPs of a new key phrase I may target. I have proved this to myself by targeting key phrases with directory links alone.
I have a network of general directories. Some of the biggest SEO companies online have been happy to purchases links on these directories on behalf of the biggest companies in the world. Why would they do this if directories were no better than link farms?
Many affiliates simply wrote off link building with directories years when I believe it was reported Google made a statement regarding the value of directory links. If I believed every Google statement then I would be waiting years for my sites to gain back links naturally. The gambling affiliate niche is one of the toughest plus most profitable sectors to work in. We have to fight for our rankings with some of the best SEO minds online. You are not going to win a war with sticks when the opposition have tanks!
Yesterday I spent an hour or so talking to someone who was thinking about venturing into the world of internet marketing. She wanted to know how to get started plus what plan of action she should take to give herself a better chance of success. She told me about her idea (not gambling related) plus her ideas for content, which by all account would keep her busy for some time. I was very surprised to hear that she had also done a large amount of research in regards to how she was going to generate income from her site. I’m always amazed how most new to the affiliate industry dream up great ideas for sites but give very little thought into how their sites will make money.
To me her idea would be easy to brand so as you can guess I was dismayed to hear that she was in the process of bidding a small fortune for an exact match domain. I sat her down to show her how to do a little research regarding the traffic the exact match domain would generate if she even managed to ranked top 3 for the phrase. Then we did a little more research to find out what would be required to obtain a top 3 ranking. It soon became clear to her that she was wasting her time with the domain. Even if she did manage to purchase it, unless she ranked top 3 she was going to get very little traffic. Worse still was that the key phrase of her domain was too narrow for her niche.
Why affiliates think that they need an exact match domain I will never know. Google hates affiliate sites more than ever before, plus there is now growing evidence that branded sites are more effective in regards to return visitors. A good example is one of my major sites. It is one of the biggest UK poker forums although it has neither “poker” nor “forum” in the domain name. I have I think, done a great job of branding it. Many quality poker players have been seen wearing shirts with my forum logo. The brand of the forum is easily associated with the logo, which even has been seen on TV. I generate hundreds of new visitors to my site each month simply by typing the brand name into search engines. This to me proves how creating a brand can really work for you. Brands sell!
Many new affiliates put far too much emphasis on exact match domains, when in the real world they have less power than before. For example let’s look at online bingo affiliate sites. The big players have sites such as Bingo Port, Bingo Base and Bingo Street. These affiliates know the power of a brand and have worked hard to establish their own brand.
So my tip for any new affiliate who is trying to build a long term future in the affiliate industry is to build a brand and don’t worry about exact match domain.
As I have said I have been working in the gambling affiliate business for over five years. I have though from time to time dipped my toes into other niches over the year. I have had success with finance, dieting, plus best of all detoxification affiliate marketing. On the whole most other niches are far less competitive than gambling. The trouble is though they are nowhere as profitable as the gambling niche can be when you get it right.
I think all gambling affiliates should give another niche a try. I would guess that many new gambling affiliates fail in the gambling affiliate niche giving up with the affiliate industry altogether. I reckon perhaps the best route would be to perhaps start off with an easier niche, build your marketing skills and your confidence before even attempting to generate gambling sign ups.
The main affiliate deals offered by online gambling operators are offered to all no matter how many sites you have, the amount of daily traffic you generate or most importantly the amount of revenue your network is generating. To me this seems not to be fair. Should a novice affiliate get exactly the same rate as someone who has been working in the industry for years? Should somebody with a single site with poor quality content get the same rate as somebody with 20+ sites in his network crammed with quality content? Of course not! Operators know this and in most cases they will negotiate with succesful affiliates.
For those who have been successful in the gambling affiliate for some time with proof of earnings for their sites I would recommend that even before adding links from a new operator, that you contact the site’s account manager. It’s the account manager’s job to get quality affiliates promoting his brand so he will welcome your call or email. In many cases he will ask for proof of sign ups and revenue generated from your sites so make sure you have these at hand.
The same also applies if you have been promoting a site for some time pushing your monthly revenue up to at least £500 per month. When you get to this stage contact the site asking for a better deal as you have proved you are successful & committed to promoting their brand. Remember not only are you generating income for yourself, but also the operator you are promoting. In most cases you will find it easier than you would expect to secure a better deal. If you fail then ask what monthly target you should reach to secure a better deal. Over the years I have listened to many sob stories form operators about tight margins, increased overheads and of course how their superb support is worth an extra 5% anyway. Strange that when I say that I’m thinking of switching to another site they offer me a better deal.
For new affiliates starting out in the gambling affiliate industry I would strongly advise you to really push one site. Of course promote other sites but try and push as much traffic as you can to your main site. Working this way you will be in a position to negotiate a better deal much sooner than if your revenue was split between several operators. Once you have an improved deal this is virtually like a golden ticket to contact other operators to secure other better deals.
Firstly let me start by saying there are some that doubt that any Google sandbox actually exists. This of course is total nonsense as Google even admitted that the sandbox effect is indeed real. Launch a site targeting competitive key phrases plus building quality links will at first give you a half decent ranking. Two to four weeks later though you will lose your ranking for at least two weeks to maybe even months. I have built over 70 sites over the last few years and have experienced the sandbox effect over and over again. For less competitive key phrases I have though escape the sandbox effect.
Looking at recent posts on affiliate forums plus from my own experience I have noticed a new form of sandbox during the last few months. Prior to Feb 2010 a new site could pick up traffic quickly by simply targeting long tail key phrases. Simply spending a good few hours researching long tails then composing 50 or so articles utilising these long tails I could guarantee a steady stream of traffic even with a new domain. During the last few months though things seem to have changed!
Many are reporting that new sites even on aged domains are simply not getting any long tail traffic. During early Feb 2010 I launch a new site targeting uncompetitive long tails key phrases and was dismayed to find although the new pages indexed quickly they were not ranking anywhere close to where they should have resulting in zero traffic. Searching affiliate forums it was clear that others were experiencing the same sort of problems.
Next I launched two more test sites. Both were new domains with of course no history of previous pages indexed. Both site targeted very uncompetitive long tail key phrases that prior to Feb 2010 should have easily ranked on the first page of Google. Both sites failed to rank anywhere close to the first page so received little traffic.
I worked on one site to fool Google that the site had a decent amount of authority and boom! Within 3 weeks the site was ranking highly whilst the other was struggling to gain even a trickle of traffic a day. I’m just now focusing on the other site doing exactly the same as I did with the first site. If traffic vastly increases during the next 3 weeks then perhaps I have an answer?
Read any affiliate forum and I will guarantee you will find at least a few threads that discuss the virtues of CPA v Revenue Share. I have discussed this topic many times over with many affiliates over the years. This though is a topic though that will rumble on for years to come as there are many variables that affect the outcome. Remember I’m based in the UK where online gambling is legal so my views on this debate will in many cases differ from those based in America.
Let’s first look at the type of sites I like to promote. I know most Americans know about Bet365, Party and Ladbrokes but there even better UK sites to promote that perhaps I will post about in more detail at another time. One thing that really puts me off Bet365 is that they do have a negative carry over policy. I know chances are slim that one of my players may win big but I like to play things safe so I’m never going to make Bet365 one of my main sites while they retain their carry over policy.
I always prefer to promote UK sites with joint wallets. I’m of course referring to sites with poker, sports book, casino and even bingo. From experience I will tell you that poker players will also dabble with sports betting, casino games and yes even bingo. The same can also be said for casino, sports book and bingo players.
UK sites in general do a great job marketing to their player base. A player that has signed up to a poker room will get not only emails regarding poker promotions but also on big UK sporting events such as the Grand National, The Derby and of course football. We love our sport in the UK with popular betting sports including football, horse racing, greyhound racing, cricket, rugby, motor racing plus many others. As you can imagine a player who signs up to a UK poker room may go on to generate more revenue for the affiliate from sports betting than from poker. Also don’t forget that many poker players may go on a degen session playing slots or blackjack which could generate thousands of pounds for the affiliate.
The main gambling portals in the UK are rock solid. Many have been around for over a hundred years prior to launching online gambling sites. We UK affiliates simply don’t have to worry about the UK sites we are promoting going bust or trying to not pay us. Add to this the high brand loyalty in regards to gambling sites in the UK and you should start to realise that I’m simply never going to trade revenue share for CPA.
I think many affiliates fail to break away from their own demographic. This is defiantly something I have been guilty of but I plan to work on this during the summer months. On the whole many of the sites that allow American sign ups are not even close to the standard of UK gambling sites. Of course Poker Stars & Full Tilt are quality sites but the same simply can’t be said for other sites. I have lost count of how many sites that do allow US sign ups have gone bust or have screwed affiliates. Many don’t have anything other than poker plus many are dam right poor quality sites. For these sites I would simply not have the confidence to accept revenue share. The chances of gaining decent traffic and revenue then seeing a site fold or screw me out of commission are simply too high for my liking. For these type of sites I would simple try and get the highest CPA possible and at the first sign of trouble bail out at fast as I can.
The trouble though is even if you get a decent CPA deal then in regards to your players you are still going to look bad when or if these site go down. Even if I was based in the US I would simply promote UK sites to build up a stable and secure player base on revenue share. It is clear to me that when gambling is legalised in the US, the UK sites are going to be in prime position, with other sites, that have in effect been sticking two fingers up to the US government having little chance of obtaining a license.
So for me it is revenue share all the way, working with quality UK sites, generating traffic from the UK plus emerging markets in Europe.
When you have established your website and are generating healthy daily traffic you will get to the stage when you are generating revenue even when you sleep. There is nothing better than waking up in the morning and checking your stats to find out how much you have earned whilst you have been sleeping.
Be Your Own Boss
Working for yourself is so rewarding. You get all the rewards rather than just a small slice of the pie if you are working for an employer. The harder you work the greater the reward!
Work When You Want
Working online you are no longer shackled to a 9 to 5 routine. You can simply work when you want where you want!
Give Yourself a Chance To Make It Big!
Most go through life with no chance of ever making a fortune. Stuck in a boring job with just enough to pay their bills and perhaps the odd holiday each year they have no prospects of anything better. I’m not going to promise you that you will make a fortune but at least you will be giving yourself a shot of doing so.
Millions of different products are sold online every day. It is a fact that sales online increase every year and will consider doing so for the foreseeable future. I know those in the US are struggling with UIEGA but it is a completely different story in UK and Europe.
Perhaps even only 5 years ago the average British punter would visit a high street bookie to place a bet or travel to casino to play blackjack, slots or roulette. How the world has changed! Nowadays most punters will simply gamble online. Online betting exchanges offer better odds than high street bookmakers with the bonus of more features such as “in play” betting. A typical online casino offers many more games than a live casino with free money for those who sign up. Another great draw is free cash in the form of sign up and reload bonuses. Can you imagine a live casino giving you £100 free as you walk through their door? Of course not!
A new study released by Merrill Lynch has reported that the Internet gambling industry is still in its infancy with a projected peek to hit around the year 2015. At that time Merryl Lynch predicts that the market will bring in $528 billion annually worldwide. The information is based on the progression of the industry from 2001. This year the projected earnings in the industry are said to reach $24 billion, double that of 2005.
I think compared to US gambling affiliates those of us based in the UK have an easy life. In the UK gambling is legalised and built in to our culture. Every high street has a betting shop, every town or city has at least a couple of bingo hall plus there are many horse racing courses and dog tracks around the country. Perhaps even more important the high street chains of betting shops including such brands as Ladbrokes, Corel, William Hill, Betfred, Victor Chandler plus many others have built successful gambling portals online. These businesses have been around for what seems like an eternity with many even listed on the stock market. On the whole affiliates promoting these brands don’t have to give a second thought to the prospect of these companies going bust or worry about getting paid each month. Things though are so different for US affiliates.
Poker sites such as Poker Stars & Full Tilt are squeezing every cent they can from affiliates. US affiliates are being pushed to promote other brands which are far less secure then the British brands. Every month there seems to be news of another poker skin that accepts US players has either gone bust or is struggling to pay affiliates. Many US affiliates have made the switch from rev share to CPA simply in many cases as they don’t trust the sites they are promoting in the long term. I would never even think about accepting CPA when promoting UK gambling sites. If I did, then I would be simply throwing money away. Remember many of the sites I am promoting have been around over 100 years. They are tried and trusted brands which are held in high regards not only in the UK but all around Europe. Most of these companies offer not only poker but casino, sports betting and even bingo. As most of them have a wallet that can be used for all types of gambling you should start to imagine how profitable each sign up can be.
Brand loyally is extremely high in regards to gambling in the UK. Looking back through my reports I have sign ups that have been generating revenue for me for over 5 years. Of course I have players who simply don’t play for months on end then one month they return. It seems clear to me that when gambling is legalised in the US, the British sites are in prime positions to exploit the new market. Perhaps it would be wise for many US affiliates to take a look at more of the British gambling companies?
I thought I would write today about a comment that was sent to me regarding my comments on the state of the poker affiliate industry.
“OK then smart arse, if you are so clever what should new affiliates be targeting if in your opinion poker is such a bad starting option?”
Let me say I’m not that clever! I do though take the time to have a good look at what is going on around me. Firstly I’m going to stand by what I said about the state of the poker affiliate industry although I will give you a tip how to make things easier for yourself if you are determined to tackle poker.
For some reason many poker affiliates seem to stick to their own demographic like glue. Just do a little research about emerging poker markets in Europe, check out a few of the big affiliates that are targeting Euro markets to see what key phrases they are using. Check the key phrases with the Google Adwords External Tool (yes I know it over estimates but it will give you an idea), then check how much easier it is to rank for the Euro poker key phrases. There are many offering superb translation services for as little as a few cents per word. Tackling these will give you a much better chance of success as they are much softer than the English speaking market.
Sports betting is a massive niche with many profitable sub niches still very soft. You can now bet on more things than ever before. You can even bet on the outcome of reality shows all around the world. How about a site targeted to just betting on reality shows? These shows run throughout the year so this could be a very profitable niche. Your site could include gossip and news of the latest episodes plus of course how to put your money on your favourite. Your research and ideas for content could be simply generated by watching the shows! Tonight is the final of Britain’s Got Talent with an expected £1,000,000 to be wagered on the event. Has anybody actually created a site to target this sub niche?
If reality shows are not your thing then how about looking for a micro niche in sports? How about just covering something like darts or motor racing? Include a diary of events plus news and tips. Just look at and online sports book and look for any sport that runs for a good few months each year. Avoid the likes of NLF or soccer. Look for the micro niches that few are tackling that you can build authority sites for. I can think of many sub niches where there are no or few decent sites.
Remember if you sign up a poker player and he deposits $100 and plays 9 x $10 +$1 sngs and blows the lot you are going to earn around $3. With a sports book sign up who wages and loses $100 you are going to earn $30.
Looking at new start ups in the gambling affiliate industry it amazes me how many are targeting the poker affiliate niche. To me this is complete madness. Not only is the poker niche more saturated than ever before but also the rewards for RMPs are at an all time low. This year we have already seen many skins go bust, changes to the qualifying requirements for CPA from Stars and Full Tilt plus now even Bodog and UB (spit, vomit) cutting back on commission. I believe the poker affiliate niche is at an all time low with perhaps much more misery to come.
Many believe the answer is to target the smaller sites, but let’s be honest; many of these are piss poor with smaller marketing budgets than many affiliates. Sorry but I would be ashamed and embarrassed to market some of these new skins to my database of players. I simply can’t see the value in the poker affiliate niche at the minute, especially for those new to the gambling affiliate industry. I made the decision over a year ago to move out of the poker sector into new emerging niches that are simply easier to target plus better still, very profitable.
So here is my forecast for the remainder of 2010 for the poker affiliate niche. More skins going busto! More tightening up by the operators squeezing every penny they can from poker affiliates. None of the new poker site start ups getting even close to being established.
For those just starting out in the world of poker affiliation I wish you good luck because you are going to bloody need it!
Many gambling affiliate believe that to improve their rankings they need to build as many links as possible. They devote a large proportion of their time and finances building links. What does amaze me is that many still believe that a link is a link. They believe that all links are equal so if they keep building links they will achieve better rankings. Other believes that they need to build links with high PR which to some degree is also not correct. Many affiliate build let say 100 links which does helps with SERPs. The trouble is that from the 100 links they build the actual improvement in SERPS is in many cases down to just a couple of links.
Many links have very little power in regards to increasing SERPs. For example just a couple of years ago I had quick and easy success with article marketing. I would write a batch of articles then rewrite them and auto submit them to the top 100 article sites. Using this method within weeks I would see good improvements in my rankings. A Google algo update last year wiped out all of the rankings I had gained with this method last year although it was fun why it lasted. Article links simply don’t have the power they use to.
Nowadays I’m far more selective with the links I build. Building links with good PR can be productive although there are many links with either low PR or in some cases no PR that are very powerful. In simple terms I now understand the metrics of urls so I can cherry pick quality back links. Perhaps this is a topic I will discuss at a later date.
There is no doubt in most cases banner ads are less effective than ever before. During the early years of online affiliate marketing banner ads use to convert extremely well. Each year though banner ads have become less effective. Many affiliates have now stripped all banner ads from their sites switching to pages loaded with in content links. So can we say that banner ads are well and truly dead?
Let’s think about the average poker theory site that is promoting a site such as Poker Stars. Use Google and you will find some sites that still use Poker Stars banners. Firstly note how most of these banners are the same design even though they are in many different sizes. Readers of these sites may have clicked these banners on other sites perhaps months or even years ago so they know exactly what to expect if they click the banners. There is simply no incentive for readers of these sites to click the banners. God knows how many sites display the same sort of Poker Stars or Full Tilt banners. A good analogy is to compare banners to the blog titles of a blog. You are not going to keep clicking the same blog title over and over again as you have already read it. That would simply be pointless. The simple fact is that you are only going to generate clicks from banners if your readers are viewing the banners for the first time. Plus of course the banner must be well designed to entice the reader to want to click it.
I ran a test on one of my forums over a year ago. I loaded some custom banners that my readers had never seen before. The click rate for the first few days was simply amazing. After a few days though the click rate, to say the least died. The next week I loaded standard banners from a well known online poker site which from the onset had a dire click rate. So it is clear to me that if you use banners, your readers should be seeing them for the very first time. This is why sites that target those new to poker have a much better CTR with well known banners than sites that target experienced players.
For over a year I have been building a big bingo site. I had somehow gone into “sheep mode” and had very few banners on my site preferring in content links like everybody else. At first my CTR was to say the least poor. I started to add a few banners and amazingly my CTR increased. I quickly realised that this was down to the fact that as I was promoting new bingo sites, my readers were seeing the banners for the first time. As I was getting many of my readers returning to my bingo site, as you may have guessed the banners became less effective. I will say though that even now if an operator releases a new banner, which I use on my site, I can virtually guarantee than the CTR for the banner will be far better than existing banners for at least a week. If operators released well designed banners every week with great designs plus of course strong calls to action I would have an easy life. In reality operators don’t create new banners often enough plus in many cases the designs are poor plus the calls to action are to say the least poor.
Using the knowledge gained, I started to split test a few of my sales pages, replacing many in content links with my own custom banners with strong calls to action. Overnight my CTR vastly improved! Now whilst others are removing banners from their sites, I’m adding more custom banners plus of course I’m always on the lookout for new well designed banners released by operators for the sites I’m promoting. Posting contests on sites such as Digital Point I can have new banners designed for as little as $10 so I don’t even have much expense in changing banners frequently. Even just changing the text on an existing banner will keep the CTR respectable. So why don’t you give at least one custom banner a try?
Why I Prefer Big Sites Rather Than Multiple Mini Sites
Read any affiliate forum and you will find a discussion on what type of sites are best. I’m pretty sure the debate on a big site versus multiple mini sites will drag on for many years as there is not a clear black and white answer. For me though I will always favour a big site.
From my experience mini sites can be hit or miss perhaps more so since Google introduced its May Day algo update. Those building thin affiliate sites are experiencing vastly reduced traffic than expected. In a recent video Matt Cutts stated that Google has indeed changed its algorithm in regards to long tail search phrases. From my network I’m seeing increased long tail searches for my big authority sites whilst some of my thin affiliate sites have indeed been hit. Google simply loves big sites! I have a few authority sites that Google will index and rank new pages within minutes. I can even rank pages from my authority sites for semi competitive phrases with just internal links. I believe the power of big sites has never been stronger whilst the power of thin exact match domain sites is decreasing virtually every month.
On the flip side of this argument, I do still think in some cases mini sites can be a great asset. For key phrases that are not competitive, if you know how to give new sites decent authority links these sorts of sites can rank and start generating profit quickly. There is no doubt though that a 1000 page site has far more power than 10, 100 page mini sites, although I realise many will disagree. You can though check this out for yourself. Use Google to search for semi competitive key phrases then check the links of big portals that rank highly for these phrases. You will be amazed to find many big sites ranking for these phrases from internal links alone, in many cases outranking exact match domains.
June for me every year means two things. Reduced traffic plus reduced earnings! Looking back through my traffic data for the last 5 years June, July & August are always my worse months of the year. So why is this? Well it simply comes down to the weather. The simple fact is these are the months when many are prepared to drag themselves away from their computers to enjoy themselves. Of course the summer months are the months when most people take a holiday, when most have better things to do than read poker forums or dabble with online gambling. Those with children have to keep them occupied during the school summer holidays plus people are occupied in other ways such as attending barbeques or just generally enjoying the sunshine.
In the UK we don’t get great summers. I can’t even remember the last good summer we had. Just a couple of weeks ago we had 5 consecutive days of warm weather which sent my traffic and earnings into a sharp nosedive. You see we Brits are so shocked to get good weather that when it arrives we get out and enjoy it while it lasts.
The bad thing about this year is that we also have the World Cup to contend with. For those from the US I will tell you that for those of us from Europe the World Cup is a big deal. Already in my home town there are many flags being draped from windows plus most pubs and clubs are doing their hardest to attract punters into their premises during the World Cup games. Most pubs and clubs will make a fortune out of the World Cup. In simple terms the longer England stay in the competition the more pints pubs and clubs will sell.
The World Cup will even hit my bingo earnings even though most of my players are women. Even my wife who has no interest at all in sport will be glued to the TV cheering on England and the same is also true for many other women. As I said the World Cup is something very special that captures the imagination of everybody. I will though happily trade reduced traffic and earnings for a long hot summer plus of course seeing England win the World Cup!
Working as a gambling affiliate is not an easy ride. Those who make it are those who work hard and are dedicated. They are willing to learn and adapt. Reports suggest that less than 5% of those who build sites in this industry actually make any money from it. So why do so many fail?
They simply Don’t Work Hard Enough
You have to put the hours in. You must build links and content daily!
They aim to high.
New affiliates are not going to make money targeting phrases like “online poker”
They don’t understand the niche they are marketing
Try and find a niche that you understand plus have experience of.
They get distracted
They start with one site but end up with many different unfinished sites.
They follow everybody else like sheep
They use the same style of site (theme) plus target the same niche as the crowd. For example many new affiliates are jumping straight into poker when perhaps poker offers the least long term value of any gambling niche. Gambling is evolving into many profitable sub niches which are not being exploited by the masses.
They know it all
They don’t have the confidence to try something new because they have had limited success with old methods which they believe will pay off long term.
They Want Instant success
Building a successful site takes time. Many new affiliates expect success in a few months.
They kill their sites
They take the easy option of selling many links on their homepage then wonder why their rankings drop.
They Work With Poor Operators
New affiliates are prone to start pushing poor operators who spend little on marketing or eventually go bust.
They fall in love with their own sites
Many new affiliates build sites that are awful as they are poorly designed, not optimised for conversions plus in many cases contain pages of poor content. Even though others will point out these flaws, they believe their sites are the nuts. As a new affiliate perhaps one of the best tips I can give you is to post your site on an affiliate forum for critique. Be prepared to see your baby ripped to shreds but take note of the critique plus of course act on it.
I could write 10 more reasons why new affiliates fail or perhaps even more. I will be honest and say I have made some of the mistakes listed above as have many affiliates who have gone on to make a small fortune.
For those who know me I’m sure you must have realised one of my pet hates is the inflated prices of some exact match domains. It is a fact that many new to the gambling affiliate industry have been “burned” paying over the odds for these types of domains. The trouble is that using the Google Adwords External Tool in most cases the number of searches that an exact match domain is suppose to be targeting is vastly over reported. Also in many cases the competition for the exact match domain means that the buyer is never even going to get close to a top 3 ranking.
Search any affiliate forum and you will find posts such as “Why Is My Exact Matched Domain Only Generating A Fraction Of The Traffic I Expected?” or even “Why is my exact match domain only on page 3 of Google?”. In my opinion exact match domains simply don’t have the power they use to have for competitive search phrases.
Many believe buying an exact match domain is a golden ticket that will help them obtain a top 3 ranking with minimum link building. Many don’t even research the sites that have the top 3 ranking for the exact match domain they intend to purchase. You may be surprised to learn that most affiliates don’t even know how to measure the strength of links that a competitor may have. Most simply look at the page rank of links but for now lets leave the topic of link analysis alone.
Big branded portals have more power than ever before and can outrank an exact matched domain even with only their own internal links. I also believe Google’s May Day update has hit some exact match domains. Rather than spending thousands on an exact match domain I would prefer to buy a domain I could brand spending the saved cash on content. I have dozens of successful sites most of which use domains that cost under $10.
So before buying an exact match domain do the following.
Check How Many Searches Word Tracker Suggests The Domain Will Generate.
Check The Sites That Occupy The Top 5 Places For The Key Phrase.
Check The Links Of The above Including Internal Links.
Check If Others Have Targeted The Key Phrase With Other Domains Such As .org or .net etc.
Check Where the Above Rank Plus How Many Links They Have.
If You don’t Know How To Do Any Of The Above Then Don’t Buy The Domain!
It’s official! Google has changed their algorithm in regards to long tail searches. Many have reported since late April that they have either seen increased or reduced traffic in regards to long tail searches. From my own network of sites I can report increased long tail searches for my established sites and reduced long tail searches for new sites. On most affiliate sites many are reporting that new sites are simply not ranking even for uncompetitive long tail searches.
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